Site Mobile Navigation

Posts published by Neil J. Young

Scott Sommerdorf/The Salt Lake Tribune, via Associated PressThe Mormons Building Bridges group marched in the annual gay pride parade in Salt Lake City on June 3.

This month, gay and lesbian Americans celebrate gay pride. There has in fact been a lot to celebrate recently: the end of the military’s Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell policy; President Obama’s endorsement of gay marriage; and the recent ruling by a federal appeals court that declared the Defense of Marriage Act unconstitutional. For the most part, these political breakthroughs have been backed by an American public that is increasingly supportive of gay rights. Such a monumental and rapid transformation on the question of homosexuality has led many observers to deem gay rights the fastest-moving civil rights movement in our nation’s history.

Broader American support for gay rights can be seen at any of the gay pride parades taking place this month. Once an isolated event occurring in only a handful of liberal cities, pride parades today draw millions in cities large and small in every region. We’ve learned to expect politicians and corporate sponsors at these parades, but the Salt Lake City gay pride parade the first weekend of June included a surprise: some 300 heterosexual members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Calling themselves “Mormons Building Bridges,” the group explained on its Facebook page that marching in the parade would be its first effort in a larger project to reach out to gay Mormons with “understanding and respect after many years of strife and heartbreak.”

Such a project puts these Mormons in a seemingly odd position in relation to their membership in the church. While the church’s present stance on homosexuality differentiates between what it calls “same-gender attraction” and homosexual behavior — deeming just the latter sinful — many Americans have come to think of the Mormon church as notoriously anti-gay because of the role it and its members played in ensuring the passage of Proposition 8, California’s 2008 ballot initiative that defined marriage for the purposes of the state’s Constitution as possible only between a woman and a man.

While Mormons Building Bridges has expressly denied any sort of political agenda and instead characterized its work as merely demonstrating “the values of empathy and compassion that our religion teaches,” it’s hard to imagine the church’s endorsing even the organization’s fairly innocuous efforts. For now, the church has issued no comment on the group or its participation in the Salt Lake City pride march. But given its history with another unofficial Mormon organization that stepped into a broiling controversy of its day, the church may not be able to ignore this new Mormon group supporting gay rights for long. In thinking about its future, Mormons Building Bridges should consider the past. The example of the church’s response to Mormons for E.R.A., an organization that rallied church members in the 1970s and early ’80s to support the Equal Rights Amendment, which the church worked very hard to defeat, provides a cautionary tale about straying too far from the church’s theological positions and political objectives.

In the 1970s, the church quickly emerged as one of the most organized and devoted forces working against the ratification of the E.R.A., a proposed amendment to the Constitution that guaranteed equality of rights under the law, regardless of sex. Seeing the amendment as an affront to traditional gender roles and a threat to the family, the church organized its members into powerful and effective activists against the E.R.A. “We believe that E.R.A. is a moral issue with many disturbing ramifications for women and for the family,” the church’s First Presidency, its three highest-ranking leaders, declared in an official statement in 1978. Ratifying the E.R.A., they warned, would result in an “encouragement of those who seek a unisex society, an increase in the practice of homosexual and lesbian activities, and other concepts which could alter the natural, God-given relationship of men and women.”

Mormons rallied to this message and helped ensure that state legislatures across the country, from Mormon-heavy states like Utah and Nevada to less likely places like Virginia and Florida, defeated the amendment. But a small group of Mormons disagreed with their church’s stance on the E.R.A. and its call to church members to work against the amendment’s ratification. One woman, Sonia Johnson, led the charge.

Associated PressSonia Johnson was led away by a police officer after she had chained herself to the gate of a Mormon temple during a demonstration supporting the Equal Rights Amendment in Bellevue, Wash., in 1980.

Johnson seemed an unlikely person to become a church pariah and a national media sensation. A homemaker raising four children, she served as the organist for her church ward in northern Virginia. She’d never even heard of the Equal Rights Amendment until 1977, some five years into the ratification period, when a visiting church official delivered a sermon explaining the church’s opposition to it. “And everything I heard about it was bad,” she later remembered in her memoir, “From Housewife to Heretic.” Throughout the state, the church was organizing its members into grass-roots groups to stop the E.R.A.’s ratification in Virginia, a crucial state in the national fight. Johnson decided to read up on the amendment she’d been instructed to oppose, but her research made her into an advocate rather than an adversary. With three other women, she formed Mormons for E.R.A. in 1978 to work against the church’s anti-E.R.A. efforts.

Starting a Mormon pro-E.R.A. organization proved difficult. Only 20 people walked behind a “Mormons for E.R.A.” banner in a Washington parade later that summer. But Johnson’s banner attracted the attention of Senator Birch Bayh, chairman of the Senate Subcommittee on Constitutional Rights. Bayh called Johnson and asked her to join a panel of religious leaders and activists testifying before a Congressional hearing on extending the E.R.A.’s ratification period. Of the four founders of Mormons for E.R.A., Johnson was the only one living the idealized Mormon life for women as a homemaker. “I love the irony,” Johnson noted in her memoir, “that, because I was the one at home doing my wifely, motherly duties, I was the one who got the telephone call that turned my feet forever into a different path.”

Johnson’s squabble with Hatch made her a national figure and Mormons for E.R.A. benefited from the publicity. Hundreds of letters of support poured in, many of them anonymous for fear that their authors would meet with church reprisals. “We have a lot of closet members, especially in Utah,” Johnson told a reporter. “There is a great deal of fear about being identified with an anti-church policy.” Still, membership soon grew to 500. By 1981, the group counted 1,000 members. In marches and demonstrations across the country, Mormons for E.R.A. expressed their support for the amendment and drew attention to the church’s efforts against it.

The church began to pay attention to the group’s increasing political activism, and members of Mormons for E.R.A. began to pay a price for their political apostasy. Some women received letters from church officials warning them about their spiritual fates. “If you are really serious about being a Mormon,” a high-ranking church official wrote to Teddie Wood, one of the original four founders of the group, “you will sustain the Prophet,” before concluding, “So far as I am concerned – you are not a ‘Mormon.’ ” Other women were removed from cherished church positions. Worse, church leaders revoked several women’s “temple recommends,” the status that allows faithful Mormons to enter church temples and conduct sacred ceremonies and rituals essential for salvation.

Johnson suffered the harshest judgment when she was called to a church trial to consider, as her summons stated, “the relationship between your church membership and your conduct during the past months.” A church leader informed Johnson that the charges stemmed from her having “knowingly preached false doctrine” and harmed the church’s missionary efforts.

Before her trial, Johnson told a crowd gathered outside her church ward building that she was “confident that the Prophet will – if necessary – step forward at the proper time to vindicate me, and to vindicate the constitutional rights of all citizens to exercise their political rights as conscience dictates, without fear of religious repression.”

But no such intervention came. Instead, church leaders pronounced her excommunicated. Her bishop, however, took pains to make clear that Johnson had lost her standing with her lifelong faith not because of her support for the E.R.A. but, as her letter of excommunication stated, because she was “not in harmony with church doctrine concerning the nature of God in the manner in which He directs His church on earth.”

The church had justified its position on the E.R.A. based on a revelation its president, Spencer Kimball, said he had received that God wanted the church to oppose the amendment, but Johnson had called that very revelation into question. When asked if she believed Kimball had received such a revelation, Johnson declared, “I tell you I do believe he has not.” Not stopping there, Johnson claimed God had instead revealed to her that the church should support the E.R.A. In flouting Kimball’s revelation and boasting of her own, Johnson had attacked the very heart of Mormonism with its belief in the prophetic status of its president and adherence to the church hierarchy’s leadership. “No other member has any such right or authority” to claim a revelation for the church, a high-ranking church official declared at the height of the E.R.A. battle.

Johnson’s fate doomed Mormons for E.R.A. Only 40 members, “in diminished numbers,” as The Times noted, were willing to gather outside the Mormon Tabernacle for a protest against the church’s efforts in 1981. Meanwhile, tens of thousands of faithful Mormons in states across the country worked diligently against the E.R.A., playing a critical role in the amendment’s eventual defeat. In excommunicating Johnson, the church had not only taken the life out of Mormons for E.R.A., but more importantly, it had strengthened its ability to command absolute obedience from its members no matter the issue, ecclesiastical or political. As one Mormon woman from Highland, Utah, explained at the time, Mormons who supported the E.R.A. didn’t belong in the church. “If we don’t want to follow the prophet,” she asked, “what are we in the church for? We’d better get out.”

In the months ahead, those belonging to Mormons Building Bridges may encounter similar responses from fellow church members and the church itself. Much of this will depend on what direction the group pursues. In avoiding politics and simply offering itself as a supportive voice for gay Mormons struggling to reconcile their faith and personal identity, Mormons Building Bridges may stay out of the church’s sights. Despite its public reputation, the church recently has offered its own measured support for some gay issues, including the revision of Brigham Young University’s honor code to allow gay students to remain at the school as long as they remain chaste, and the support of a 2009 Salt Lake City ordinance that guarantees gays and lesbians housing and employment protections.

Critics view such moves by the church as cynical public relations ploys to improve its image after the church faced huge public outrage over its role in the Prop 8 fight, but the church has clearly demonstrated to its members that they don’t have to take the most hard-line stances on all things gay. Some church watchers even believe the church may be slowly changing its position on homosexuality in a manner similar to the church’s reforms regarding African-American members in the late 1970s. “Aren’t women as important as black men?” Sonia Johnson asked at the time.

Still, given that it defines homosexual behavior as a “serious sin” and remains vociferously opposed to marriage equality it’s difficult to imagine the church’s turning a complete about-face on homosexuality. It’s almost equally hard to imagine, given the escalating politics of the gay marriage debate, that Mormons Building Bridges will be able to stay out of the fray. Not weighing in on a rumbling political matter that strikes at the heart of the group’s very focus could undercut its relevance. And will Mormons Building Bridges stay silent should fellow church member Mitt Romney emphasize his opposition to gay marriage in the remaining months of the campaign? Already squabbles have emerged on the group’s Facebook page about what the mission of Mormons Building Bridges should be and what next steps it should take.

In weighing those decisions, Mormons Building Bridges should look to the past for guidance. The example of Mormons for E.R.A. serves as a warning of what group members might face should they take a more active role in opposition to the church’s own political efforts and a more pointed view against its prophetic declarations. Indeed, recent history also provides its own chastening lessons. In 2008, several Mormons who worked against Prop 8’s passage reported receiving various punishments from their church leaders, including one who was reportedly threatened with excommunication.

As Mormons Building Bridges moves forward, group members may find themselves weighing their personal and political convictions against their spiritual commitments. Sonia Johnson described that painful choice as “trying to decide which child to save from the fire.” Members of Mormons Building Bridges will have to act carefully to ensure they don’t get burned, but there are ways the group might remain in the church’s good standing while also bringing about change, if that is what they want. Petitioning the church’s leadership to alter its policies or theology will not produce the desired results, and protesting the church’s actions will most likely elicit harsh rebukes or worse. History has been clear that the church does not submit to pressure from below nor does it overlook challenges to its leadership.

But if it succeeds in creating a sense that gay Mormons are welcome in the church, Mormons Building Bridges may eventually bring about important shifts in the church’s relationship to its gay members and its involvement in anti-gay politics. Gay Mormons have left the church in droves. One route Mormons Building Bridges might take would be to work to stop and even reverse that trend with a vigorous public campaign that assures gay Mormons they belong in church. Were gay Mormons to become a sizable and visible presence in church wards across the country, perhaps the church will take notice and adjust accordingly. While many regard the church’s decision to grant black members the priesthood in 1978 as a delayed reaction to the Civil Rights movement, which had achieved its major accomplishments more than a decade before, many scholars believe the church changed its course because growth overseas, particularly in South America, meant that its membership increasingly included those of African descent. It may take a long time, but if gay Mormons prove to be an active component of the Mormon church, then the church, much like President Obama, will likely continue to evolve its position on homosexuality.

Neil J. Young is the author of the forthcoming book, “We Gather Together: The Rise of the Religious Right and the Challenge of Ecumenical Politics.” He teaches at Princeton.

A week ago, 150 evangelical leaders meeting at a ranch outside Houston backed Rick Santorum’s candidacy for the Republican presidential nomination. Presumably, they hoped that their endorsement would pull Mitt Romney back from the front of the race. Saturday’s primary in South Carolina – with evangelicals expected to make up sixty percent of the electorate – provides what seems like a perfect testing ground for disrupting any claims about Romney’s inevitable nomination.

Newt Gingrich is apparently surging once again, taking votes from Romney. Coupled with Rick Perry’s exit, the evangelicals’ blessing of Santorum in Texas could propel him to a surprisingly good showing on Saturday or — who knows? — perhaps even a victory.

Speaking from Texas shortly after the endorsement, Gary Bauer, a prominent social conservative who ran for president in 2000, explained why the evangelicals had rallied behind Santorum: “They were all looking for the best Reagan conservative.”

For nearly twenty-five years, Ronald Reagan has loomed over every Republican contest. During the debates this campaign season, he has been mentioned four times as often as the most recent Republican president, George W. Bush. At the final debate in South Carolina on Thursday, for example, Newt Gingrich said, “When I became speaker, we went back to the Ronald Reagan play book.” Mitt Romney, for his part, didn’t like to hear Gingrich speaking that way. “I looked at the Reagan diary,” he told Gingrich. “You’re mentioned once.” Read more…

About

Weekly pieces by the Op-Ed columnists Charles Blow and Ross Douthat, as well as regular posts from contributing writers like Thomas B. Edsall and Timothy Egan. This is also the place for opinionated political thinkers from all over the United States to make their arguments about everything connected to the 2012 election. Yes, everything: the candidates, the states, the caucuses, the issues, the rules, the controversies, the primaries, the ads, the electorate, the present, the past and even the future.